The Missing Eyes
by manwithgills
Summary: Watanuki and Doumeki are thrown into the backstreets of Kansai, Japan with Mokona in tow to look for the soulless daughter of a typhoon carrier before Tokyo is overtaken by a flood. Doumeki's as much of a 'pain' as usual, and Watanuki's wooing Lady Luck.
1. Chapter 1

The Missing Eyes

Disclaimer: Not mine; not yours. Translated from行方不明の目

* * *

Watanuki _hated_ going outside after multiple typhoon warnings had gone up in the weather forecast. Hell, he didn't even watch NHK, not owning a television, but his classmates had checked the news from their cell phones, the sort of cell phones he could afford in 20 years provided that his "work" for Yuuko Ichihara had finished, and they'd complained that the typhoon was 12 hours early: they wanted to miss tomorrow's exam. The sort of weather they cancel school for, and he was out _shopping._

The umbrella he had cherished for a 200-yen price tag (the very one that Himawari-chan stood under for 30 whole seconds last week!) had decided to flip inside out in the wind, and he was now drenched, 200 yen short on his budget, and- well, dammit; that umbrella meant a lot to him! There was no way that this wasn't Doumeki's fault. Doumeki was bent on stealing Himawari-chan. In typical Watanuki-logic, the creator of the logic was allowed to make ridiculous assumptions matching the ludicrousness of the truths that surrounded him and Doumeki's conspiracies was really no stranger than demons of rain and pretty pink rabbits that rained sugary confections. The latter was bound to exist in some dimension and he'd _met_ the former weeks ago.

The city was going to flood. The warnings on the news were there for a reason. Watanuki had gone out knowing that there were heavy wind and rain warnings, as well as flood warnings. But Yuuko Ichihara was not one to worry about natural disasters affecting her beyond how they affected the crops she would eventually eat, and dimensional witches apparentlyposessed some inherent right to send a consumptive high-school student to his death in the rain if she saw fit.

This just sucked.

* * *

_(30 minutes earlier)_

_"Watanuki, Watanuki♪!"_

_Maru and Moro shrieked in delight as they ran circles around him the moment he stepped into the shop._

_"What gives you the right to mock my name in song? Quit it already!"_

_"Aww. You're no fun. Ne."_

_"Boring. Ne."_

_"Yuuko-sann, can't you do something about these two?"_

_"Youths are so energetic. It's quite cute, don't you think? But I'm waiting for my boiled pot-stickers and battera sushi. What's keeping you?"_

_"What? Yuuko-sann, those things don't go together; anyway, I'd have to go shop for the battera, and _what the hell_ is _he_ doing here?"_

_"Yo. I want fried pot stickers. Thanks. Oh, I'm staying for dinner so you'd better get cracking on the shopping. Want a poncho?"_

_"No! My grandfather would walk out of his grave before I'd wear your castoffs!"_

_"Now, it's nice that you're playing with Doumeki-kun, Watanuki, but hadn't you better get going?"_

_"Going out, going out♪"

* * *

_

That was how he'd somehow been pushed into _going out_ in monsoon weather. It wasn't as if he could find a dry spot under a roof and wait out the storm, since if weather reports he saw through shop windows were right, this typhoon wasn't moving. He was dragging his feet under the last roof of the road home when a sword tapped his shoulder and a resonant bass announced:

"Oi. Yeah, you. You got a bint called Ichihara where you're headed?"

His day just got impossibly shittier. This guy was too pale. He was paler than Watanuki, even. Even so, his head seemed to reach into the sky and blend with the darkness of the low storm clouds. To top off the effect, this new guy resembled a telephone pole. Grey kimono, black sheath, pale grey face reaching into the sky. And a sword. A real sword. Watanuki changed his mind. This guy was a samurai cosplayer more than he was a telephone pole. It was funny how most people were too busy trying to get home to notice the freak with a sword out.

"_What!_"

"You deaf or something? I'm looking for Ichihara?"

"Oh. _Oh._ Are you a customer for Yuuko-sann?"

"Something like that. Gonna follow you home, brat. Hope you don't mind."

So this rude stranger was a Kansai person. Something clicked in his brain so he started walking. He asked, over his shoulder, "You wouldn't happen to carry an umbrella," but got stony silence for his pains so he avoided puddles all the way back to the shop. Yuuko-sann had competent guests; this man could walk himself to Yuuko-sann's place with no problems. Even with a sword out. Even though swords rust. Damn, the rain was strong. The grocery bags had better hold out.

* * *

_(20 minutes earlier)_

"_I asked Doumeki-kunn to come keep you company. I think it's really nice of him to come. You don't mind setting dinner for him tonight?"_

"_But I never asked for him! And Yuuko-sann, I can't do one of your long shifts tonight; I have an exam tomorrow! You must remember having been in school in mid-July yourself. Can't this job wait until vacation starts?"_

"_Watanuki, you really do talk too much. Come, you have to go shopping before the typhoon really hits."_

"_Talks too much, too much, too much♥!"_

"_Guys…"

* * *

_

Before he had too much time to think about the customer, he was taking his muddy shoes off in Yuuko-sann's genkan.

"Yuuko-sann? Are you here?"

Yuuko-sann with a quietly giggling Maru and Moro in tow appeared in the doorway.

"Oh, good; you've brought him safely. You know where dry clothes are. And you, may I have the pleasure of knowing your name?"

"Don't you remember me?"

An odd look crossed Yuuko's face as the man's teeth bared.

"It was you that arranged this predicament of mine. A _price_, you called it. A price that lost me the eyes I saw this world through."

Watanuki decided to start dinner rather than listen. Yuuko-sann had an unfortunate habit of informing him of whatever he didn't want to know whenever she wanted an errand done anyway.

"The guy smells weird," Watanuki groused, "but when Doumeki came out, he smelled less. The guy isn't a spirit. Doumeki seemed to see and hear the guy just fine, judging from his raised eyebrow at the sword, and that was a lot of reaction out of Mr. Stoic-And-Handsome. So not a spirit. But what? Not that I care."

Watanuki walked into the closet under the stairs and changed into a clean and thankfully dry yukata. Yuuko-sann was, apparently, against modernity even in other people's nightwear. His uniform was coated in a layer of mud knee-down. Shit. But it was 4:50 and high time to start cooking so he hung up his uniform and dragged his shopping bags into the kitchen.

* * *

He'd tied his apron on and started chopping vegetables while the pot-stickers cooked by the time Yuuko-sann waltzed into the kitchen. 

"No snacking before meals," he reminded her as she threw herself carelessly into a chair. Doumeki followed her in and popped a cucumber slice into his mouth before a reprimand even came to Watanuki's mouth.

"That goes for you too!"

"Dinner! I want one too!"

"No! Mokona!"

"Watanuki, if you keep playing with Mokona and Doumeki-kunn, you'll burn my pot-stickers. Do you want to know why that man came to our shop?"

"Hitsuzen, right? It's what you always say."

Watanuki turned back to his cooking and fumed over his sodden uniform pants.

"You're cranky today. Did something happen?"

"What? No!"

"Do you want to know the name of that man?"

"No."

"Amai Shuichi. He's taking a bath now."

"And you tell me anyway!"

"He came to ask a wish. I'm going to send you and Doumeki to grant it. Would you like to know _what_ he is?"

"Huh?"

"His grandmother is the root of all typhoons. He is only an unfortunate substitute for this decade."

"I never asked that either!"

"His payment for his daughter's continued existence a decade ago was to carry all typhoons on Japanese land for his grandmother with his daughter as his Eye. And that involved giving the girl the eyes he uses to see this world with."

"Eyes? He saw me just fine, Yuuko-sann. And he isn't drowning in that bath."

"This shop crosses dimensions, as do you. He sees other worlds with different eyes. So you must have stood out in a crowd like a particularly pathetic firefly. You jump between dimensions too fast for mortal eyes to catch, that's all."

"I jump dimensions?"

"He misplaced her somewhere between Kyoto and Osaka. He can't go back himself; he follows barometric regulations unless he can find otherworldly shelter."

"You just ignored my question!"

"I want you to bring her back to him. I suspect the girl is with her grandmother now, whom, coincidentally, is no longer on speaking terms with Shuichi-kun. It's because he gave his eyes away to a soulless shell. Not her fault, really. He doesn't have the heart to recapture his eyes from her because those eyes in her head are all that keep her in this world."

"Huh."

"Besides, you could go eat okonomiyaki like those odd kansai people! It'll be fun! Oh, Shuichi-kun, you're out. Would you like beer or sake tonight?"

Yuuko-sann's three-second changes of mood never ceased to amaze him.

"Dinner's ready," he declared through a haze of exhaustion.

* * *

A/N: That's the happy ending for Chapter 1. I'm not too into these little notes, but tradition (is costly and often harmful) will be kept because I need feedback on what works and what doesn't. The good thing about self-translation is that I can alter timeline and delete scenesto fit the different cultures, but I might be thinking too anally about "this worked over there so I have to bring it here" and missing the point entirely. So let's see. Please do one of these things after reading the story. Grammar corrections _will_ be taken seriously (and changed accordingly) unless I decide you're wrong. 

1) Copy/Paste a line that made you laugh.2)Tell me if a line(or a whole conversation)was out of character.3) Tell me you liked it using a smiley. Creative smileys give you points./0X!4) Request something with a suitable bribe. 5) Other.

Pretty reviews (even smilies) are always rewarded with longer updates; I hardly need to remind you all. Thank you for reading! Next update is Monday or Tuesday depending on time zone. Longer though. (Have pity! I do this in Japanese first!)


	2. Chapter 2

The Missing Eyes. Ch 2. 

Language Notes:  
-Kansai-jinn is a popular way to bunch every person from the Kansai region. They speak a different dialect, they're 'coarser' although you'd never catch anybody saying that outright in Japan, and they have a different culture. So if you found a Kansai-jinn in Tokyo, they're far more likely to be referred to as'kansai-jinn' then by their names for a while. Like an American in England or a gaijin in Japan...  
-July and August: typhoons. Typhoons rarely hit Osaka.There hasn't beena typhoon's eye crossing Osaka directly for as long as I can remember- even if Osaka gets strong wind and rain, the worst of the damage veers out.  
-Reading numbers as words happens in Japan all the time. Watanuki isn't justinto numerology. (4: shi: death and therefore not good for apartments / 919: kyu-ichi-kyu: quick in a certain telephone number...)

* * *

"You had better be ready to leave as soon as you finish eating."

Those were the first words out of the Kansai-jinn's mouth at the dinner table. Technically speaking, he'd also muttered something along the lines of fried food going straight to his gut. Since Watanuki was too busy glaring at Doumeki wolfing down his cooking, nobody replied for a moment. Watanuki processed the man's words, then nearly flipped over backwards.

"Now?"

"Do you have a better timetable? You do realize that Tokyo will flood to the extent that businesses will close tomorrow in under five hours?"

"What does that have to do with me?"

Doumeki looked at him as though he'd started babbling in Greek.

"The guy brings typhoons. Your boss exchanged your service in bringing his kid here, and until you do, the typhoon will not move."

Watanuki opened and closed his mouth, then settled for a general complaint when nothing came up.

"Yuuko-sann, that's not fair! There was that rain demon girl, then that Raijyuu, and nothing good _ever_ comes of weather people-"

Watanuki was interrupted by cold water raining on his head. He yelped. When he took off his glasses to wipe them, he saw a storm cloud had formed over his head, and he turned to glare at the Kansai-jinn only to find him glaring back.

"Gossip was right. You are a troublesome child. _Bachiatari_."

"Trouble, trouble, Watanuki's trouble!"

Mokona was drunk again and Doumeki was shoveling food again. Yuuko-sann looked amused and Watanuki was sulking. He shoved in a mouthful of food that he could no longer taste and stood up.

"_Gochisousama_. If that's all, I'll leave the cleanup to you and head out. How do you suggest I get to Kansai and get back within the aforementioned five hours, sir?"

He tossed the most formal form of keigo he knew at the Kansai-jinn sarcastically.

"Take me, April-Fools-Watanuki! And don't forget your beloved Doumeki-kunn!"

Sometimes, Watanuki _knew_ that Yuuko-sann had created and programmed Mokona specifically to irritate him. He looked at her accusingly but she only smiled languidly at the overcast sky.

"I'll send you on the Ginza as soon as Doumeki-kun finishes dinner. Shuichi-kun didn't joke about the time limit. I'll be very disappointed if the city flooded, and I'm sure you and Doumeki-kun would like to go to school tomorrow."

"Don't raise objections."

Doumeki rose and stepped between Watanuki and Yuuko-sann, silencing any potential complaints. He then nodded at Yuuko-sann.

"Thanks for dinner. Can you send us out, then?"

Watanuki followed Doumeki with his mouth agape and long limbs flailing. The last he heard before he followed Yuuko-sann through the door with Mokona in tow was a rumbling, "funny movements that kid makes" and two high pitched giggles belonging to two little girls that _never_ ate. Which was really odd, now that he thought about it, but then he was on the Ginza and he was too busy falling over his own feet to think about anything beyond a meter away.

Yuuko-sann was completely out of her mind. That was the only explanation for the Ginza walk they'd just finished. She'd left them sitting on a bench in a train station at seven pm in a small Kyoto city called Karasuma because 'that was the main Kansai crossroads in the ginza, and besides, with Hankyu and JR on their sides they should have no problems' getting to the address printed on the small scroll they'd been handed. They had to do this before trains shut down for the night. Then there was the other set of problems glaring at them. They were on a platform with no ticket, no money unless Doumeki had his wallet still, only a yukata on Watanuki and an odd black stuffed toy that talked sitting on Watanuki's left shoulder. All this –while Yuuko-sann probably got rip-roaring drunk on sake that _he_ made the snacks for with a strange guest –he wasn't going to think about it any more.

* * *

Doumeki stood.

"Train."

Watanuki jumped up as the train rushed into the platform and consulted his scroll.

_Shibana Sakurai_

_4-8-7 Garden Heights Apartment_

_Kamibanaku, Ibaraki-shi_

_Osakafu 562-0422_

"Do you even know where this train is going?"

Watanuki looked up and Doumeki was already sitting in the half-empty train. He hollered in surprise as Mokona bounced gleefully and bolted into the train seconds before the doors whooshed shut behind him.

The emptiness of the train to the degree that he could _sit_ even at seven pm was bizarre to his Tokyo sensibility. He gingerly sat near Doumeki and spread the small scroll between them.

"Do you know where this train is going?"

Doumeki looked at him.

"While you were busy with your motion sickness, I was reading the train maps. This will take us to Ibaraki city."

"Tell me, next time, before you hop on a train and leave me behind!"

"Next time, pay attention."

"What?"

"Watch it, people are staring."

Doumeki looked ahead in stony silence. Watanuki sighed and got back to his original point.

"This address. Don't you think there's something _wrong_ with it somehow?"

Doumeki looked over the address.

"What, the references to the flowers? Sakura, shibana, kamibana: half of which are probably not real. And in a Garden Heights Apartment? Sakurai probably thought it was a good joke when she bought the apartment."

"Well, yes, that too. But look at the numbers. 4-8-7; shi-hachi-nana, shi-ba-na. Death flower. And 0422, shi-ni-ni. To die. Don't you think this is weird?"

"I wouldn't think too much about it."

"Don't you _care_?"

This last statement cracked Watanuki's voice to an embarrassing degree. Doumeki thought about it.

"No."

Watanuki re-rolled the scroll and sat for another twenty minutes in silence before he realized that he'd crossed prefectural lines and that he was now in northern Osaka, the place that the typhoon carrier had been kicked out of. Typhoons were rare in Osaka. Even when typhoon clouds hovered over Osaka, their center was surely outside the prefecture. The typhoon that had devastated other prefectures nearby had skirted past this place: the crops got a good rain and the wind hadn't touched a thing. This was Ibaraki.

"We're here."

Watanuki walked off the train, hoping Doumeki would follow, and stalked over to the dozing man in the ticket booth. He rapped on the window and watched the man jerk upright.

"Yes, how may I help you?"

"We're looking for a Garden Heights Apartment in Kamibanaku?"

The man stretched his neck and pulled out a map from his desk.

"Kamibanaku, you say? Number of the apartment, please?"

"4-8-7."

"All right, found it. Ride to the next stop going south, head out the East gate and walk straight. Turn right at the closest Wendy's and you should see the apartment to your left hand side. Have a good night."

The man nodded courteously before staring at Mokona with a strange look on his face. Ducking in embarrassment, Watanuki pulled Doumeki down the stairs he had just come up.

* * *

The ticket man had given decent instructions, that much was true. Without a ticket, though, Doumeki and Watanuki had resorted to climbing the fence at the far end of the thankfully dark platform and had escaped the yelling security officer by a mile. Their search for the East exit had taken another precious five minutes before they could start walking. By the time they had found the Wendy's, Watanuki was dying for a cup of water.

"Can we go in and ask for water?"

"Still sick from the Ginza?"

"No! We walked a long way and the air was dry in the train because of the air conditioners!"

Doumeki had walked into the shop and approached the counter before Watanuki could finish his sentence. Or so it had appeared to Watanuki until he, too, walked into the empty shop and attempted to approach the counter.

"Where is this?"

Watanuki attempted to sit up and noticed that his body was too heavy to move. He was fairly sure his eyes were open, but it was dark and he couldn't tell either way. Just then, a ceiling panel opened overhead and flooded.

"What are you doing down there?"

"I don't know! I was walking and then I was lying here!"

Doumeki's familiar voice calmed his nerves somewhat, and at least he now knew he wasn't blind. Watanuki looked to his side and flinched when he saw snakes twining around his wrists and across his torso.

"Snakes!"

He struggled but the snakes proved heavier than they appeared. Just then, a pale and beautiful woman with snakes draped across her body walked over to the panel Doumeki had removed, and jumped down.

"You've arrived."

"Huh?"

"Mokona-sann, it is my pleasure to meet you in this less than pleasant set of circumstances."

"Yo! Watanuki fell down your trapdoor when he came in upstairs to ask for water. I followed."

"So I see. It was rather fortunate that you appeared thus, because I was just going to send my snakes to fetch you three."

Watanuki thought about screaming, then thought better of it.

"Who are you? Do you control these snakes?"

The woman held out an arm and allowed the snakes, one by one, to crawl up her torso. Watanuki sat up but didn't bother to stand.

"I know about you. I was listening in on Shuichi's conversations at Yuuko's house. I am called Kushinada. I was blessed by a god for my promise to watch over the Orochi that tried to eat me when I was young."

"What Orochi? And you're still young, I don't know what you're talking about."

"Young," the woman repeated, "was a few thousand years ago. Now I travel with snakes because I am too old for sunlight. Aren't you familiar with the story of Orochi?"

The woman proceeded to inform him that the gigantic eight-headed serpent Orochi ate virgins annually until Kushinada was the last virgin left in her valley some thousand years ago. The warrior god had shown up and gotten the Orochi drunk and full, then cut off its heads. Unfortunately, Orochi had a companion. The warrior god and the sun god had blessed Kushinada and granted her with the speech of serpents in exchange for her promise to guard Orochi number two. The trick to this was that she had forgotten to ask for a time limit, and she was stuck playing with snakes for all infinity.

"So why did you want to bring me here?"

"That's easy," laughed Kushinada. "This ring is going to help you deal with the woman who has trapped the girl you are looking for. What Yuuko and Shuichi has forgotten to tell you is that the woman, Shibana, is a minor goddess in her own right. She is the daughter of the goddess of typhoons. The girl you seek is the goddess of the rainy season in Osaka. Fairly specific and small, but a goddess is a goddess."

"I _said_ nothing good comes of weather types."

Kushinada ignored him.

"This ring, should you decide to use it, will take your life line from the hand you wear it on. In exchange, it will grant you immunity from her curses for an hour. I should know, she gave it to me herself- and I engineered it to add the life line clause."

Watanuki thought over Kushinada's offer.

"What if I don't decide to use it?"

"You pay nothing, and I will have my snakes retrieve the ring from you. But I have an interest in seeing this child free too. Shuichi was a favorite of mine while he was growing up."

"Why are you interested in my life line?"

Kushinada held out her hands. They were bland and smooth. Not a fingerprint in sight, and pale enough to put paper to shame.

"I think I would like an end to this Orochi business. I'm sure that if I left my post, they would find a suitable hero to kill it instead of hiring a keeper. You see, with your life line, I could die in time."

Kushinada bowed and retreated into the darkness. Watanuki, feeling like a great weight had left his shoulders, kicked the pins and needles out of his knees as he stood.

"What's taking you so long? I got your water and the ice has melted."

Doumeki's head reached into the opening and dropped a coat sleeve to him.

"You've been talking to thin air for the past half-hour. I found this coat sitting around, so climb."

* * *

A/N: I was clearly dreaming when I thought I could ignore Kafka and Wilde and Wrede to write fanfiction yesterday. But an update is here- I realize that I have had readers if none have left reviews- guys, if this story stinks you could tell me; I would liketo have more good xxxHOLiC fanfic out there! pause same rules apply, I will edit any grammar error you spot, alter dialogue that doesn't work and I take requests for plot with sufficient motivation (roses, chocolate, you know the drill). Smileys are still good reviews because I totally whore for attention.


	3. Chapter 3

The Missing Eyes Ch.3  
Disclaimers- I forgot last chapter and I'm likely to forget again. Not mine, not yours. This is my compliment to the writers of xxxHOLiC...

Language notes:  
--Hiragana is the basic way of writing any form of Japanese with no inherent meanings in each character. Katakana is a modified version of hiragana, made to accomodate foreign words entering Japanese, like "garden heights apartment" which I'm sure exists somewhere.  
--I debated on the mention of Icarus but I couldn't put in US-movie references that Watanuki wouldn't know, and I have figured out the basis of... five anime in my life. I figured Watanuki had to have read some Greek myths in school, and students very often think in the language of whatever they've read last.

* * *

Watanuki drank the water, glad that Doumeki had been exaggerating in his comment that all the ice had melted. It wasn't as if he _wanted_ Tokyo flooded. He crumpled the flimsy paper cup and tossed it to its doom (the trashcan) before walking out of the shop and colliding with a telephone pole. A telephone pole that was not Amai Shuichi. This time. 

"Are you going to tell me why you were wasting time in there?"

Watanuki glared at Doumeki.

"It's only 8:30; much of the time wasted was spent on the train." Watanuki thought for a moment. "Not that I would take up that creepy lady on her offer."

"What lady are you muttering about?"

"She called herself Kushinada. Supposedly guarded this snake called Orochi."

"The one that ate virgins?"

"Why do you of all people know those things?"

Watanuki stared at Doumeki incredulously. His reply about some grandmother or other was dissatisfying, so he decided to ignore it and stalked forward until he found a squat looking modern apartment building. _Garden Heights_ was written in hiragana, an odd affectation of the rich recently. Not that he would know about those things, and not that the apartment was necessarily the residence of the rich, but the rich wannabes of Tokyo that had invested in buildings during the economic bubble of the late eighties were always like this. One impracticality after another with only enough of a break to toast sake. Peace had dulled their heads after this many years of mediocrity, although the alternative was just as bad.

"Here?"

Doumeki stared at the building doubtfully.

"Do you see anything?"

"I don't think I'm supposed to."

Watanuki walked up the well-lit steps to the entrance, and then realized that he didn't have the key to the entrance of the apartment. Visiting hours were until 6PM if he was to believe the sign on the door, and the entrance to the apartment itself got locked past visiting hours. He tugged at the door for good measure and was only half-surprised when the door melted open in his hands, offering too little resistance for a contraption of heavy glass and steel, even if it were onlyaccidentally unlocked. He sighed. All that meant was the he was probably meant to get in the apartment.

Mokona finally poked his head out of the extremely well-cushioned bag where he was napping.

"Are we there yet? I want to eat an okonomiyaki. Hurry up, April-Fools-Watanuki!"

"You just had dinner. You're forgetting that you came to offer assistance. Do you think I should, I don't know, take that Kushinada woman's advice and use this ring? _How_ do I go about using it?"

"You just transfer the ring onto your left ring finger. It's the medicine finger and the finger you tie your spouse to. This ring was designed to untie you from any magic Kushinada could cast on you by reworking the internal structure of the bindings people place on one another. And I'm still hungry."

Mokona was always full of arcane encyclopedic knowledge that seemed to serve no purpose but to irritate. That Ichihara Yuuko-sann. Worst of all, Mokona never volunteered the information. Unless Watanuki were to ask a question every step he took, Mokona would never divulge helpful information prior to anything but a life-threatening blade hanging on his head. Watanuki had an internal bet that Mokona would have, given the choice, informed Icarus fifteen seconds before the wings were completely shot that his wings were going to melt out of over-ambitious flying, then advised him that his only chance at life lay in catching a flight with the nearest bird. Icarus would have plummeted to his death knowing that he missed his chance at life and that Mokona was an unhelpful bastard.

Or something. Mokona wasn't evil, just embarrassing to explain the presence of. What other self-respecting male high-school student carried a stuffed toy that was _alive?_

Doumeki was standing ahead looking at a sign on a door 118. This was the second door they'd crossed; the other was a door 141. Apparently room numbers didn't follow any special sequence. The nameplate read: _Sakurai_. Right room, then. Watanuki was about to re-check his scroll when he heard Doumeki rap on the door.

"Sakurai-sann?" Watanuki knocked again for good measure before an inelegant thudding and clanging of pots and pans echoed in the background.

"Oi, Watanuki, there's a ton of spiritual strength wandering around this apartment. I thought you should know," Mokona said cheerfully. Watanuki couldn't see a thing, of course. One day he was going to find a person that didn't put any ridiculous _taika_ on information that didn't cost anything to give freely and ask about what exactly his eyes did and why he was involved with an alcoholic dimensional witch.

The door opened to the heavens collapsing on a small boy. Or so it seemed until Watanuki inferred from the boy's sharp sob and the sound of painted wooden beads clattering on the entrance's bare floor that the boy had fallen and gotten caught in a _noren_ of beads. A grumbling woman came out within seconds, wiping her hands on her apron and pulling the boy up with a reprimand. Watanuki bowed politely.

"I'm sorry to disturb you at a busy time. Is your boy all right?"

The woman laughed.

"Boy? You came here for a boy? Then a boy you may have, but judging from that scroll you're wrinkling in your grubby hands, you got sent here for a little something else. Why don't you step away from this doorway before you and your henchman get squirrels stuffed down your larynxes?" the woman suggested. She spoke with the same thick accent as Shuichi had at our shop.It was a wonder how Shuichi had kept the accent living away from home so long. Nobody could have understood him in the other prefectures.

Then Mokona reared his head.

"Sakurai Shibana, it is a pleasure to meet you as a representative of Ichihara Yuuko-sann." Watanuki was surprised. That was the first sign of genuine politeness Mokona had ever shown anyone. Then again, Mokona had never greeted a minor goddess in front of him before either. "If Watanuki beats you up and leaves you with a rodent stuffed down _your_ throat, I suppose you could take it as an insult from the witch herself. She sent you her errand boy because she thought he could deal with you." Watanuki changed his mind. He stuffed Mokona back in the shoulder bag and began to stutter apologies.

"I don't mean to, I mean, I wouldn't presume that," he began when the woman smiled and stepped back with the boy staring at us from the safety of her arms. She drew into her house across the wooden curtains that had gone up without Watanuki's noticing, and so Watanuki and Doumeki followed silently.

"You're apparently more interesting than I thought," the woman told them neutrally. "I don't like the looks of you very much," she told Doumeki, "and if Ichihara sent _you_, you must be the rumor wonder-boy that attracts spirits like carnage attracts flies and vultures. I am the biggest vulture you've seen yet," she told Watanuki. "Now you must tell me, did that idiot son of mine ask Yuuko to fetch his daughter as a wish? Because he's running out of things to pay with. Sit, you two. Then introduce yourselves."

"I'm Mokona."

Mokona jumped up on the table. "That one's Watanuki Kimihiro, the rumored carnage boy," "and I do not need a dimensional gateway to introduce me," interrupted Watanuki forcefully. "The friend I came with is a classmate in school. He isn't a henchman."

"Nor do I require you to introduce me. I am Doumeki. Doumeki Shizuka."

"Terribly pleased to meet you, James Bond," the woman smirked. "But I must ask; you look awfully bored. Do you have a problem?"

"You're really the goddess?"

"Do you doubt that?"

"You live in a shabby place."

Watanuki stared at Doumeki in horror. Mokona seemed to enjoy the scene, but Mokona had laughed while playing shiritori in a dark street with spirits dogging their tails for fun. No, Mokona wasn't a sane meter of safety.

Sakurai Shibana looked aggrieved and insulted. The illusions of wealth worked on her and all beings who entered to the extent that the true state of the house didn't matter to her. Doumeki saw a dusty, cobwebby house with cracked china littering the furniture. Watanuki and even Mokona saw an old-fashioned but well-maintained house with expensive hangings and a clean and happy boy hanging off her apron-strings. Quite literally.

"And that _boy_ you talk about. She's a girl. And she's about eight years old. Doesn't she talk?"

Sakurai Shibana looked at Doumeki for a long time. With a long sigh, she pronounced, "Is that how it is, then." She grabbed the tiny boy's wrist fiercely, and at once Watanuki saw what he assumed Doumeki had been seeing the whole time. The excess fat off his cheeks shrank back as his body stretched vertically, the dark hair grew long and matted, and the modern-looking clothes shrank into a child-style yukata. She really did look eight years old. The vacant eyes still stared into his. Those didn't change. She watched from behind the apron.

"It is hardly her fault that she is caught in adult games. But as she is a soulless shell, I only feel a vague curiosity and slight hatred. No pity. This one should be ground into the ground until her memory lies in a stone box- but her death will be more than my life to some. Her blood has a price on it. No, I can't kill her. I'll make you a deal."

* * *

Yuuko sipped her tea and watched the rain seep through the rocks of her garden unendingly. She had switched to tea after finding that she had only half a bottle of sake left cold, knowing that starting something she could finish only halfway wasn't worth the effort. She was going to be blindingly, wonderfully smashed tomorrow night and if she wasn't hung over the next morning she was going to know why. 

Shuichi had no need to watch the rain. "What are you thinking?"

"Why didn't you tell him about your mother's powers?"

"Why don't you tell him what exactly he could be doing come twenty years with the spiritual strength he has now and the amount it could stand to increase if he learned to ask the right questions?"

"Point taken." Yuuko laughed.

"I don't doubt my mother will toy with him for a few hours. I do know, though, that half the witches and do-gooders of your acquaintance will have her head if she kills the errand boy of a dimensional witch with an unfinished contract half-paid. Half of her acquaintances will have her head for killing her own blood, soul or no soul." Shuichi stabbed the air recalcitrant with his katana.

"Stop that. That's not a toy."

Yuuko was still watching the rain with an uplifted chin.

"I should pay a visit myself, but if I don't apologize, this short life of mine will get cut even shorter than need be. You know how mothers are," he said ironically. "She hasn't forgiven me yet for the stunt about my eyes and she isn't likely to forget that I accidentally split blood with my father and lost her gift of immortality. Even though that was her fault."

Shuichi sighed, stretched out flat on the tatami, and smiled at Yuuko through eyelashes that drank the light out of his eyes.

"I trust that the payment I made will be satisfactory?"

* * *

A/N: I suppose the lack of real occurences if inherent in the media I took on- I'm basically writing an elongated episode of xxxHOLiC through a different voice more than through a unique situation. Plus, HOLiC is so _Japanese._ There's something _twisted_ about a country where pencil shavings signify melancholy, nostalgia, industrialization and God knows what else all in the same five-phrase-two-line poem...human action is, then, too significant to pack in too much of.  
So this is what I think of what I wrote. Tell me what you thought of any of what I wrote so far, even a "I love Oscar Wilde (see last chapter's a/n)!".Reviews are my inspiration. I'm happy to update in four days rather than seven if I find some. Unfortunately, when I use Kafka as inspiration, he makes me put in gruesome humor, Anthony Hopkins makes me write calm-and-collected psychopaths, (and the clever ladies who wrote _Iolokus_ for the X-Files universe half a decade ago compounds my sentences and pop-cultures my head) and I can't keep a sense of what the narrator here is supposed to sound like.  
/Endspeech. 


	4. Chapter 4

The Missing Eyes Ch. 04

Language Notes: Awamori is from Okinawa. Recommendations go to the legally able of you.

* * *

Which was all very nice, but why was he walking out _again_ in _another_ pointless search that shouldn't be his? One day he was going to hire flunkies of his own and damn it all to hell, they were going to suffer through every one of their reincarnated states until he crushed them in their grasshopper lives in a chloroformed bottle.

Deals. Drinking houses. Searching for a prostitute in a drinking house.

Why?

The alternative was feeling guilty for letting Tokyo flood, of course, or getting killed by attempting to rob the goddess Sakurai Shibana of her grandchild by force. Watanuki kicked a pebble and immediately regretted scuffing his shoes before he could afford new ones.

"Turn left here?"

Doumeki turned right and kept walking. "You have no sense of direction."

Watanuki sputtered. "The lady never mentioned a single right turn!"

"She said to look for a temple and to circle it until we found the house in the back. It's the same distance both ways."

"Then you might as well have turned left like I suggested!"

Sputtering was, apparently, not a good look for the day. Watanuki had to run to catch up. Mokona was staring out of the basket at the temple intently. His wide eyes focused on a shoji screen.

"There's someone in there," Mokona said in a monotone. Then his normal voice returned and Mokona was cheering as Watanuki tripped over his feet in his haste to get away from the something-or-the-other Mokona claimed to have seen. Doumeki walked steadily onwards, circling the temple toward a cluster of lights. Watanuki reflected on the terms of the deal.

One; he had to find the girl, the woman's daughter-in-law that Amai had divorced when he'd been cursed with his bidding to watch over typhoons on Mainland Japan. Two; this prostitute needed to return with him to Sakurai. Three; he had to get back within a couple of hours including the walking time or Tokyo was toast. Metaphorically speaking, that is. It was porridge more than toast at the moment, and at any moment it was likely to convert itself to soup. Four; he needed to convince Amai to take the girl's eyes back and send the child's soul on the merry way out of limbo. To resurrection. Although why Amai had resisted until now to do this escaped him, and how Watanuki was supposed to change Amai after this much time was a mystery.

* * *

"Irasshaimase!"

"Irrashaimase!"

Two near-identical voices with an unnerving likenesses to Maru and Moro greeted Watanuki and Doumeki from either side as they entered the yellow-lit shop. China dresses were apparently the order of the day, and a yukata falling off a woman's shoulders displayed itself prominently in the back of the shop. The woman stood.

"Two of you? Would you like to be seated separately or together?"

Mokona poked its unfortunate head out exactly at this time. The two girls at the door giggled in delight and crowded Watanuki's bag. Doumeki stared straight ahead. Watanuki, flustered, bit out a quick answer.

"We, ah, were sent on an errand; we're not customers. Do you know a," he paused. He had no idea what this mystery daughter-in-law was called. "I'm not here as a customer. A woman sent me, her name is Sakurai Shibana."

With all the slow seduction in the world, a voice hummed in Watanuki's ear, "Not a customer, hmm?" The woman with the yukata was edging dangerously close to Doumeki now. "Are you sure?"

"Of course we're sure." Watanuki yelped as the woman smiled a closed-lipped smile. "Do any of your coworkers know a Sakurai Shibana, or take the name Amai?"

A woman stood gracefully, conspicuously so, from a windowside table next to a drunk man that seemed about to topple over. She'd seemed rapt in the man's attentions until moments ago, but she had apparently listened in. The man, however drunk, took notice when the woman stood to leave him.

"Hey!" he protested, but the woman ignored him and stepped up to Watanuki. "Acquaintance of my mother's, are you." Watanuki, unable to deny the accusation disguised as a question, backed against the now-closed door. She said, mildly this time, "I suppose I will have to go with you. I was waiting for her, but summons are summons."

The woman bowed to the less-than-conscious drunk she had been entertaining, then to the other women scattered attractively throughout the shop.

"Bella, you can't just leave, your shift has hardly started."

The woman, or rather Bella, had other ideas. She waved at the woman in the yukata and bade her to "take it out of the debt" or something and ducked out of the shop's doorway to a familiar swirl of colors or a lack thereof and dizziness. They were on the Ginza.

* * *

Watanuki felt faint as they stepped out to front garden of Garden Heights.

"Would your complete name be Belladonna," Doumeki asked the voluptuous figure. He appraised her from toe-up impassively. Watanuki gaped from his bent and ungraceful posture. "It rather fits the motif of this building. And how is it that the Ginza linked you to here but Ichihara Yuuko couldn't pinpoint the house any better than a train station half an hour away?"

Bella smiled. She really had been startlingly beautiful, not just voluptuous, in her day. "I haven't been called anything but Bella for a few years now. I am really," she flourished a black rose from her cerulean silk hair ribbon, "quite the belle of the ball. And as for the Ginza- well, I always had a good homing instinct." With the usual flair for the dramatics the more intelligently insane show, she stepped toward the door of Garden Heights and clicked her way through the door in precisely stepping stilettos.

Watanuki had a bad feeling the first couple clauses of his deal with Sakurai-sann were just a bad scam. Mokona poked his head out of the bag.

"Mokona and women that wear cerulean don't seem to agree. Your time's running out- I'll turn into the crocodile from Peter Pan if you don't watch out. Tic toc." With that, Mokona refused further commentary.

* * *

Watanuki half-hid behind Doumeki as they walked after Bella. It was a classic Bad Feeling moment, the sort even Watanuki thought people in horror movies would know better than to follow. That was exactly why Watanuki was walking forward in the pseudo-darkness of apartment-grade lightbulbs at 9:00 in the night. Watanuki, king of fools.

He was right, he reflected: the moment they entered the damn place they met ambush by Bella and Shibana Sakurai. The women each grabbed a boy and flung them into the room that certainly looked nothing like what Watanuki saw the last time he'd been in there. The living room had been cleared out to show only the paintings on the four walls, four to a wall and in a complex geometric pattern that reminded him inexplicably of Sudoku. Exits on two opposite sides of the room, one to the genkan and one to the dining room.Which was all very well had they not been tied up as well. And where was Mokona?

"Watanuki, you need to get out of here!"

Mokona hurtled out of the bag and bounced on his face. Cast complete, they could safely be assassinated. With luck, Watanuki wouldn't see anything coming what with Mokona's feet getting in the way of vision. Then shadows fell across the room from both sides of the room. Watanuki thought the walls were collapsing in on them when the two women walked in, Bella from the genkan and Sakurai from the dining room. No convenient R2D2 this time to open up an escape hatch.

Weren't the women both in the genkan thirty seconds ago anyway?

"You've done a wonderful job. You've even brought me my friend so that I can share my new toy."

Bella added, "I thought it was all over when my friend let my nickname slip. I'd forgotten how stupid you schoolboys are."

Friends, Romans, Goddesses, lend me your knives for a quick-and-easy slaughter. Amen. They brought their heads down over the boys and smiled with a terrible symmetry.

"We're two of a whole,"

"One daughter to four,"

"Most easily classified as—"

"Doppelgangers."

"Doumeki-kunn is right, of course. Belladonna is my preferred name in this world; I am a death flower, stripped of my immortality and status by Shuichi choosing his idiot father over me."

Watanuki ventured, "Did you gain immortality by marrying Amai Shuichi, then?"

Belladonna looked at him scornfully. "I was a favored acolyte to Shibana here for two millennia, and I accrued my own following over time. She and I began to split her rule. Mortals worshipped us as being one and the same. She had her first son only a few decades ago, and dismissed me and granted me mortality so that I could seduce her son and guard him when he became an adult. I never quit being faithful."

Shibana continued, "Shuichi cooperated for the best part of thirty years. He married Shibana, and under his protection, she became immortal once more. Then he got wind of his father."

* * *

"How is it, Shuichi-kunn, that you cursed your own immortality in the short few years I didn't see you? Surely you were a little more competent than that."

"Watch it, woman," was his amused reply. "You know I went looking for that half-assed moron my mother refused to marry, with good reason not to. He asked me to claim him as a father and I did it in a snit against my mother."

Yuuko gave him a sidelong glance. "Starting bloodline-altering rituals in a snit?"

He tossed back his last sip of Awamori and shrugged. "I didn't realize that my immortality was going to slip away to him until I already gave my dad half that pint of blood, and when I slammed my hand into the fire to stop the ritual, I managed to curse my direct beneficiaries along with myself. Classic story."

Yuuko looked at the Awamori distrustfully. It was _alcohol_; it had sat around in storage in its vase for half a year now, but it wasn't mainland material. "Classic? You're the first one stupid enough to try it for the most recent part of remembered history, you mean."

"My mother never informed me that recognizing my father to his rightful place when she denied him the same place would mean my immortality had to go."

Yuuko snorted.

Shuichi sat up and poured himself another cup. "It's not so bad. Chicken pox or scarlet fever could be my death, sure, but I rarely let kindergarteners breathe on me and it shouldn't matter too much."

"It's no wonder there aren't that many of the gods' descendants cluttering this country today with their immortality. You don't live long enough or conventionally enough to make a difference."

"With any luck, I won't pass the century mark and I'll have died before I got assigned godly status. I hear it's a pain."

"Exactly." Yuuko poured yet another cup of lukewarm tea for herself. "I wonder if Watanuki and Doumeki are nearly done."

* * *

A/N: I saw the movie version of xxxHOLiC. What my reviewers are saying is that Doumeki can't enter the shop. What the movie shows is Doumeki and Himawari sitting in the shop asking for sushi after their great adventure in that rigged house... I'd go with the movie being part of canon, if I may. I'll add another wrinkle to this story if I get too many complaints, but let's just go with this for now.


End file.
